Postcolonial Feminism, The Politics of Identification, and the Liberal Bargain

Abstract

The article focuses on the complex positioning of people from disempowered backgrounds with respect to liberalism and liberal dividends. The author offers the term liberal bargain, paraphrasing Deniz Kandiyoti’s “patriarchal bargain” and Cynthia Cockburn’s “ethnic bargain,” and dwells on the interconnections between the three. The liberal bargain indicates the particular consciousness and symbolic whitening that “colorized” (i.e., excluded/oppressed) people tend to adopt when they attempt to cash in on the liberal promise. Within the discourse of postcolonial feminism, the concept is intended to promote the discussion of power differentials among women, through refining the analytically dissatisfactory color metaphors habitually used to address issues of hegemony and ethnocentrism.

Narrating Modernity and Tradition: The Case of Palestinian Food in Israel

“…According to Sa'ar (2005;, Blumen and Halevi (2005), and Kanaaneh (2002), rising levels of female education, decrease in fertility rate, and the ongoing preoccupation with notions of modernity have all contributed to more autonomy to women. They face interrelated familial, national, and ethnic forms of oppression and navigate between them.…”

Voices from the periphery: A narrative study of the experiences of sexuality of disabled women in Zimbabwe

“…In line with an assertion made by Sa'ar (2005), AFDS therefore holds the promise to address the tensions that exist between what appears to be disabled women's cooperation with patriarchy and the women's tactfulness in creating advantages or opportunities for themselves in the arena of sexuality, thereby offering both passive and active resistance. In addition, AFDS may also begin to, among other things, examine the reasons why disabled women do not pursue the legal rights that are guaranteed to them by both local and international legal instruments and the tensions that exist between such instruments and African culture.…”

“…(Crenshaw, 1989, p. 154) An inability to examine difference in relation to the complex intersections of various social life attributes in different contexts runs the risk of rendering feminism irrelevant to oppressed and marginalised groups of women (Sa'ar, 2005). Different social life attributes intersect in diverse ways in divergent contexts to influence the experiences of sexuality of disabled women.…”

Sacralized citizenship: women making known selves in an Islamic teachers’ college in Israel

“…In other words, a Palestinian citizen is a citizen only to the extent that religion and ethnicity have been erased. This is why on the one hand, you find Palestinian Israelis doing what Sa'ar (2005) calls "liberal bargaining," and on the other you hear an ethno-nationalist discourse like that of the Arab political parties which is the dominant voice among university students. Alternatively, you see the Islamic Movement trying to use holy places as a trump card in the struggle for securing civil status or position (Luz, 2005).…”